With the crucial holiday shopping season here, the Apple name is losing its luster in the face of a more diverse market of tablets and smartphones, a tech analyst told CNBC on Monday.

In an interview on "Squawk on the Street," Colin Gillis, a senior technology analyst with BGC Partners, said the Apple brand needs some good news now that competitors have narrowed the gap between their flagship devices. He said he's looking toward a long-awaited deal—perhaps in mid-December—with China Mobile to stimulate the company's outlook.

Under the potential deal, Apple would distribute its new line of iPhones on the Chinese Mobile network, the world's largest wireless carrier.

"There's very few catalysts left in the name," Gillis said of Apple. "I'm looking toward the China Mobile news. ... I think most of the good news is out in the name."

"It's following the same path as the iPhone," Gillis said. "The only smartphone was the iPhone and the competition slowly caught it. It's the same thing in the tablet marketplace. The only tablet was an iPad and then Amazon is going to get a little traction."

Apple made headlines this weekend when it acquired PrimeSense, an Israeli chip-developer whose 3-D machine vision technology was used in Microsoft's Kinect devices. Israel media said the deal cost about $350 million, which Gillis called a "drop in the bucket."

(Read more: Apple acquires 3-D chip developer PrimeSense)

Gillis said Apple was "behind the curve" when it came to motion sensing, which he predicted was becoming a bigger part of the home living room. He said Apple should be more "inquisitive" going forward and put more cash into work toward innovation rather than dividends, for example.

"They're lacking in payments," Gillis said. "They're lacking in advertising. There are a lot of areas where they're weak [that] they could grow in. They can go up and down the stack a little more."

— By CNBC's Jeff Morganteen. Follow him on Twitter at @jmorganteen and get the latest stories from "Squawk on the Street." Reuters contributed to this article. CNBC's Cadie Thompson contributed to this report.